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LEM

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LEM

fession vigorously. He spent two years at Madeira, a winter at

Gibraltar, and twice visited Italy as physician to the family of Lord Warwick. He had a decided taste for botany, and made large collections of plants from Madeira, the Canaries, South of Europe, North and South America, the Cape, and Australia. His herbarium, containing about thirty thousand species, was given after his death to the university of Cambridge. He was modest and gentle in his manners, and was always ready to communicate information to others.—J. H. B. LEMERCIER, Jacques, an eminent French architect, born at Pontoise towards the end of the sixteenth century. During a long stay in Italy, he had become thoroughly imbued with the renaissance principles then paramount there, and on his return to France found opportunities for carrying them out on an important scale, with such modifications as his own taste or that of his employers suggested. His first great work was the college of the Sorbonne, which he was directed by Cardinal Richelieu to erect in 1629. Six years later he commenced the church of the same name, one of the best ecclesiastical interiors in France of its time: its monumental character is due to the circumstance that Cardinal Richelieu built it as his place of sepulture. Whilst these works were in progress, Lemercier was employed in erecting a palace for the cardinal, which was named the Palais Royal when presented by the cardinal to the king: scarcely anything is now left of the original building. Appointed architect in chief to the king, Lemercier's next great building was the court of the old Louvre, occupied by the French academy, and the grand Pavilion de l'Horloge, with its colossal caryatides and lofty cupola. He also erected several churches, of which that of the Annunciation at Tours is considered the best. His latest building was the church of St. Roch, commenced in 1653, and left unfinished at his death in 1660. Notwithstanding his high offices, Lemercier is said to have died in a state of comparative poverty.—J. T—e. LEMERCIER, Louis Jean Népomucène, a French author, born at Paris, 21st April, 1771; died 7th June, 1840. Before the Revolution he had obtained a certain celebrity, and was in the society of the great; nor did he hesitate to satirize the demagogues in his "Tartufe Revolutionnaire." To Napoleon personally, even when first consul, Lemercier could give the most biting answers, and the "modern Cesar" received from him many a rebuke. He was a member of the Academy, and composed a large number of plays.—P. E. D. LEMERY, Nicolas, a celebrated French chemist, born in 1645. In 1672 he commenced a series of lectures at Paris, which attracted crowds of students, among whom was the great Condé. For this success he is in great part indebted to his making the language of chemistry, which up to his time had been confused and unintelligible, clear and precise. Originally a protestant he was subjected to persecution; but after a short residence in England, where he was patronized by Charles II., he embraced Catholicism in 1686. He died in 1715. He published "Cours de Chimie," 1675; "Traité des drogues simples;" and a Pharmacopeia.—W. B—d. LEMIRE, Aubert, historian, was born at Brussels in 1573. He entered the church in 1598, and became vicar-general of the diocese of Antwerp in 1624. His life was one of hard and laborious study, and his works form a political and literary history of the Low Countries. He died at Antwerp in 1640. LEMNIUS, Lævinus, a celebrated physician, born in 1505 at Zeiviksee in Zealand, where he practised for many years. After the death of his wife, he entered the church and became canon of Zeiviksee. Four of his works have been translated into English—"Occulta Miracula Naturæ;" "Treatise concerning Complexions;" "An Herbal for the Bible;" and the "Sanctuary of Salvation." The first book he published was "De Astrologia." Died in 1568.—D. W. R. LEMNIUS, Simon, a Swiss poet who wrote in Latin, was born early in the sixteenth century in the Grisons. He studied at Wittemberg; but his irregular life prevented his advancement, although he was personally acquainted with some of the chiefs of the Reformation. A volume of epigrams which he published in 1538, brought him into collision with Luther, and he was soon after banished. It appears that some of these epigrams were in praise of Albert, archbishop of Mayence, towards whom Luther had no friendly feeling. The book was seized, the printer imprisoned, and the author arrested. On the one hand it is affirmed that the book was full of personalities, and on the other that it only satirized the vices of the age. Lemnius was condemned in 1538. The rest of his life was very unsettled, and in November, 1550, he died. He translated into Latin verse Dionysius De Situ Orbis, and Homer's Odyssey.—B. H. C. LEMOINE, François, the chief of the French painters of the earlier half of the eighteenth century, was born in Paris in 1688. He studied under Louis Galloche, and he made such progress as to be at the early age of thirty elected a member of the French Academy of Painting. In 1724 he visited Italy, where he was captivated more by the great Macchinisti of the seventeenth century than by the more solid merits of the great painters of the Cinquecento. His models of emulation were Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco. On his return to Paris he made a great impression, especially by his frescoes in the cupola of the chapel of the Virgin in the church of St. Sulpice. He was appointed professor of painting in the Academy, and in 1736 he succeeded Louis de Boulogne as principal painter to Louis XV., with a salary of three thousand five hundred francs per annum. Lemoine in that year completed his masterpiece, the large oil-painting of the "Apotheosis of Hercules," painted on canvas and attached to the ceiling of the Salon d'Hercule at Versailles, which occupied him four years; it is sixty-four feet by fifty-four, and the ground, which represents the blue vault of heaven, cost the painter, it is said, ten thousand francs for ultramarine. Though a vast and magnificent composition on the whole (it contains one hundred and forty-two figures), and one of the most brilliant efforts of painting in France, it is what the Italians call a pittura di macchina, and belongs more to the province of ornamental painting than to high art—the influence of his great model Pietro da Cortona is very evident. Such criticism was passed upon this work in his own lifetime, but with all the bitterness of a disappointed rivalry; and this added to a naturally melancholy temperament, aggravated by the death of his wife, brought on a chronic aberration of mind, and on the 4th June, 1737, only ten months after the termination of his great work, he committed suicide. He educated a great school; François Boucher, Charles Natoire, and Belle, distinguished painters, were all pupils of Lemoine. He executed smaller pictures, as well as great works, many of which are well known from their prints by some of the best French engravers.—R. N. W. LEMOINE, Jean, Cardinal, was born in the thirteenth century at Cressi. Having taken his doctor's degree at Paris he proceeded to Rome, where his great literary services, especially his "Commentary upon the Sixth Book of the Decretals," procured him the purple. Under Boniface VIII. he was ambassador to Philippe-le-Bel, filling the post with success. He followed Clement V. to Avignon, and died there in 1313. The cardinal founded a college at Paris which bears his name.—W. J. P. * LEMON, Mark, editor of Punch, was born in London on the 30th November, 1809, and was educated at Cheam in Surrey. Some of his earlier years were passed in London in commercial pursuits. Already in 1825 he figures as a prolific author of dramas, serious and gay. Belonging to the band of wits by whom Punch was founded in 1841, Mr. Lemon became one of its editors on the resignation of Mr. Henry Mayhew, and has continued to hold that position ever since. He has been a copious contributor to other periodicals, especially to the Illustrated London News, Household Words, Once a Week, &c. In 1852 some of his miscellaneous contributions were collected and reprinted as "Prose and Verse."—F. E. LEMONNIER, Pierre Charles, a French astronomer, was born in Paris on the 23rd of November, 1715, and died at Heril, near Bayeux, on the 2nd of April, 1799. He was the son of Pierre Lemonnier, professor of philosophy at the Collége d'Harcourt, author of a Cursus Philosophic, who was born in 1675, and died in 1757. He began the practice of astronomical observation in 1731. In 1736, at the early age of twenty-one, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences, and appointed, along with Clairaut and Maupertuis, to measure an arc of the meridian in the arctic regions. He was one of the original members of the Institute, on the formation of that body after the Revolution, which he did not long survive. He left three daughters, one of whom married Lagrange. Lemonnier was distinguished by skill, accuracy, and industry as an astronomical observer and calculator; he laboured with great assiduity and success in the determination of the elements of the planetary motions, and the places of the fixed stars. One of his claims to distinction is his having been the master of Lalande.—W. J. M. R.

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